


30 Seconds

by Ilthit



Category: Watchmen (2009)
Genre: Canon - Movie, F/M, Gen, Microfic, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-22
Updated: 2013-11-22
Packaged: 2018-01-02 08:28:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1054645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ilthit/pseuds/Ilthit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>30 tiny fics of one to three sentences.</p>
            </blockquote>





	30 Seconds

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PallePumpgun](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PallePumpgun/gifts).



1\. Telltale

 

There are little things Lori can pretend not to notice - the bit of speed she added to that punch to make the bone crack, how Jon blinks faster when he's confused, the fresh scars on the folding skin of her mother's arms - if that's what it takes to get on with things.

 

 

2\. Overgrown

 

Jon started with what he knew - hydrogen and oxygen, methane, nitrogen; gases to bind the star's light, to absorb into the ground, keep the oceans flowing, mixing, teeming, until it only needed a little nudge.

 

 

3\. Bad poetry

 

The Kinks made Rorschach's diary into a concept album. It became their lowest-selling record since the early days, slammed by one critic as a 'cynical attempt at mining the media for shock value'.

 

 

4\. Bad luck letters

 

Sally rarely wrote her fans back, preferring to bask in the warm glow of their attention. The ones threatening suicide she threw right in the trash. Nobody needed that kind of a downer.

 

 

5\. Stamp

 

Lori had trained damn hard to do everything in high heels. She tipped them with steel, and learned to love the sound they made on asphalt late at night, squelching with rainwater and blood.

 

 

6\. Elbow grease

 

Archie was getting finicky in his own age, so Daniel worked for months on designing a new engine, ordering the parts and putting them together himself. Sure, it was a lot of work to do on a ship he wasn't even supposed to be flying anymore, but it gave him something to do while the world ramped up to a global group hug.

 

 

7\. Bundling up

 

Lori bit her lip when she first saw Nite Owl's snow costume; she bit it again when he took it off.

 

 

8\. Whiteout

 

Adrian walked up to the towering windows to look out into the blinding, shifting, slow expanse of snow and sky, but the TV screens still flickered in reflections on the glass. He had work to do.

 

 

9\. Smudge

 

The more carefully she painted herself, the more the Comedian wanted to make that fucking mascara run. He didn't question why.

 

 

10\. Game over

 

Veidt Industries was disintegrated in a grand gesture and its enormous capital invested in rebuilding sites of destruction, churning out jobs, tax income, and new ventures, the blood sacrifice secure in its foundations and a bright future ahead, at least until mankind caught up with itself again.

 

 

11\. Snowbanks

 

Bloodstains don't last long in the snow. Adrian sometimes thought of Rorschach's broken cells splattered across his front yard, the physical, if invisible, reminders of his rage and violence. He wasn't sure if the shift of emotion it gives him is pleasure or regret.

 

 

12\. Old photographs

 

"She'd be happy to know this is still going around," said Sally, waving a copy of the famous photo of the Silhouette dipping a nurse in white on V-Day. "With all her posturing, she was as much of an attention whore as I ever was, the poor bitch."

 

 

13\. Firewood

 

Rorschach's journal. People think they can burn or bury evidence, think it makes a difference if the jury won't have enough to convict them. Think wrong.

 

 

14\. Let go of the railing

 

It's going to hurt like hell hitting the ballroom floor underneath, even if Lori does catch the chandelier to break the fall, but the staircase is on a fire and, oh, what the hell.

 

 

15\. Creative project

 

Early days, if you took away his face, Walter Kovacs was just another scumbag beating another scumbag's teeth in, but Rorschach got in, wormed his way to every last cell, and Walter Kovacs was all too happy to disintegrate.

 

 

16\. Bowl of rice

 

At one point during their partnership Dan started keeping bowls of cold, cooked rice in his fridge, because Rorschach would eat them raw from the cupboard and that couldn't be good for his digestion. Yeah, so, maybe it did make him soft to care. It didn't mean he wasn't right.

 

 

17\. A series of bets

 

It doesn't matter how good you are, if you play this game you either quit or you die.

 

 

18\. Rivulets

 

Dan has seen the inside of a man's brain splatter on the barroom floor because Rorschach just put a pipe through his head. Dan has never done that. He stops, even as human juices spill over the pristine gloves of his suit.

 

 

19\. Limelight

 

You stand by, you become shock value. You become collateral damage. The Comedian turned to the camera and grinned.

 

 

20\. Garbage

 

Fornication, humiliation, pornographic murder of innocence - by contrast, violence was pure and good; he was pure and good; stinking of meat and nostalgia, he returned to you your shame, your dirty little secrets, the failings of your mortal body and weak mind, and you became your own executioner. The Rorschach Gospels, 1990, Falcon Press.

 

 

21\. Coffee

 

"Coffee?" the Night Owl asked.

"Tea, please, Dan," said Ozymandias.

"Of course it's fucking tea," said the Comedian.

 

 

22\. Picnic

 

A restaurant opened by the New York crater called End of the World, beating the one in Hong Kong by just an hour.

 

 

23\. Baked goods

 

Rorschach pointed to the sign over the bakery he and the Nite Owl had been investigating in relation to an extortion ring. "More like baked bads." That's when Dan smelled the smoke, mixed with the bacon smell of burning flesh.

 

 

25\. Interview

 

It was all there on paper, between interview transcripts and clouded in the eye-watering dullness of legal documents. Adrian made sure the truth wasn't the only story to emerge from the ocean of information left behind. That was the thing about conspiracy theorists - they could never collectively stick to just one story.

 

 

26\. Bee-sting

 

JFK's head exploded, and the Comedian felt nothing. He saw it on the news later, and couldn't even get excited about the publicity. It was one fucking guy; these clowns had no idea.

 

 

27\. Slow death

 

Moloch swallowed his pills conscientiously, every day at the same minute against the certainty of an uninspired death, because the alternative was even worse.

 

 

28\. Sign of victory

 

"When the breath rattles in the back of his throat and you know he won't be getting up again."

 

 

29\. Statuette

 

Lori let Dan keep the $60 collector statuette of the Twilight Lady for two reasons: 1. She had a lot of experience in being reasonable, and 2. She never told Dan, but her mother swore up and down that the Lady was gay as a barrel of monkeys these days.

 

 

30\. Inseam

 

Beyond all the noise, all the emotion, all the fucking politics and poetry, was this: the mask that let a sack of meat become an idea.

 


End file.
